Showing posts with label pheidippides. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pheidippides. Show all posts

26 Apr 2016

Why I Don't Much Care for the London Marathon

Logo of the 2016 London Marathon (with official corporate sponsor) 


A friend, Annette, sends me a text from the London Marathon. "How wonderful", she says, "to see 40,000 people - all shapes and sizes, all creeds and colours - running in perfect harmony and raising money for good causes." 

She's German. And a vegan. So her idealism and admiration for körperkultur doesn't surprise me. But I was a bit disappointed that she should know me so badly, after so many years, that she thought I'd share her enthusiasm for this ersatz sporting event. Because I don't.

In fact, I find its mix of fun-running, charity, narcissistic athleticism, media hype, and commercial sponsorship all wrapped up in Lycra and covered in sweat, deeply offensive. It's an example of what Lawrence terms sport in the head and, like him, I loathe those individuals who parade the self-conscious mechanism of their bodies whilst reeking with smugness and self-regard.       

Baudrillard is no fan either of idiots endlessly pounding the pavements. He rightly characterizes jogging, for example, as a type of ascetic idealism born of consumerism and the Californian cult of the self; a form of socially approved masturbation, the pleasure of which has nothing to do ultimately with either sport or sex.

I can't imagine what Pheidippides - who ran with real joy and purpose and not simply to comply with an obligatory performance principle - would have made of what passes for heroism today ...